Notes

Sheet

Combat Initiative. Some people are ready to fight on the drop of a hat. Some people are ready to fight while the hat is dropping. Black John believes in the virtue of having everyone’s throat cut before the hats even get touched.

6

Conviction

Resolute. Knife fighting is perhaps the most psychologically brutal thing a human being can do. Without unshakable self-conviction you’ll be a chalk outline.

3

Deceit

Lying With The Truth. As with all Fae, he cannot tell a fib. That’s actually the biggest fib of them all.

6

Discipline

Emotional Control. No self-respecting Unseelie would ever permit compassion, charity or sympathy to factor into his decisions.

1

Empathy

Spotting Weakness. The fight should already be over before a blade ever gets drawn.

1

Endurance

Mind Over Matter. He doesn't mind because you don’t matter.

3

Fists

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He’s rather a novice here, but mostly because grappling in a knife fight is a suicide attempt.

1

Guns

Handguns. He doesn’t like firearms. They’re too noisy and too prone to running out of ammunition. You never hear of someone getting shot twenty-seven times, but getting stabbed twenty-seven times is a different story…

1

Intimidation

Implied Threats. Unfortunately, he’s found that most people are idiots who are too dumb to notice implicit threats. Reluctantly, he’s begun to become more overt.

4

Lore

Unseelie

2

Resources

Money Talks. He no longer has access to the mad money of his financier days, but he’s still living the high life.

2

Scholarship

Finance. Most of the techniques he used have since been deemed illegal, but that’s not the same as being unprofitable…

3

Stealth

Nighttime. A Klingon proverb says that a thousand throats may be slit in one night by a running man. For that one quote alone, John will forgive Star Trek fans for being gormless nerds without lives.

6

Weapons

Daggers. Swords draw attention, but a good dagger or folding knife is almost as lethal and orders of magnitude more concealable. Many people think a folding knife isn’t a lethal weapon on account of how it doesn’t fire a bullet. John plans on never allowing them to learn otherwise.

5

Abilities:

Immune to Dominance

Immune to Hypnotic Stare

Self-Healing

John Black's first job came during his freshman year of college at UCLA, where he spent time working in a boiler room cold-calling retirees to hawk pump-and-dump stock schemes on them. "Caveat emptor," the firm called it; "predatory practices," society called it. What John knew was that he had a talent for it, and before too long any moral questions he had about his job evaporated under lines of cocaine, bottles of eighteen-year-old Scotch, a never-ending stream of arm-candy girlfriends, and every other measure by which people foolishly count success.

As King of the Boilermakers he was a big fish, yes, but he also knew he was a big fish in a very small and measly pond. There was more money to be had further up the ladder. He studied at night, took his SEC stockbrokers' course and earned a desk at Bear Stearns. In time he discovered the various ways that mortgages could be chopped up, tranched, repackaged and securitized — a never-ending sea of money. He wasn't the one who invented such schemes, of course: he was no quant, no financial whiz-kid with a Ph.D. in math. But somebody had to convince other brokers to participate in these schemes, had to sell the lie of "it's totally risk-free," had to seduce other people with promises of money falling from the sky.

He was able to do it to Florida retirees. He was able to do it to big-city bankers. All around the world, everybody wants to get something for nothing.

During the giant financial crash of 2008, on the last day of Bear Stearns' existence, John was called to the Chief Executive's Office. He thought he was going to receive a golden parachute: he received something quite different. JPMorganChase agreed to sell off 'unnecessary assets' as part of the Bear Stearns buyout: when John arrived in the CEO's office, he discovered that he had literally been sold to an Unseelie.

The Visitors had been watching him, you see… and they were thoroughly impressed. Any sane society would have arrested John a dozen times over for his Machiavellian scheming and power-playing, but to the Unseelie he was a recruit with great promise. Although the true motives of the Unseelie are impenetrable even to the second-geneation Unseelie, he believes their intent was to recruit him into becoming a Knight of the Unseelie Court, whether he wanted to or not.

He didn't even have time to scream.

Five years have gone by and John Black is now better known as Black John. An enforcer for the newly-emerging local Unseelie Court, he's known for his near-sociopathy coupled with an absolutely unshakeable commitment to proper form and decorum.

Charming, really, which after a while may give way to being deeply unsettling. He's unflappable and can face virtually any situation without losing the slight, enigmatic smile he wears. He's a stickler for courtesy and the traditions of hospitality, and his word — when freely given — is an absolute bond. He has enough decorum, composure and charm to fool people into thinking he's some kind of heroic figure…

… and that's usually someone's final mistake.

Geasa: Good Form. He must always show good form and proper decorum. This is not in any way related to being nice, law-abiding, or fair.